"Lines of perspective," all right. The vivid chromatic "set" here -- white moon emerging from fog, against pale blue sky, with sandstone-hued cliff en face -- reminds me that what keeps your sequence fresh every day are the colors of the world. Always in season.

Joe,

Well, "standards" are indeed always relative. No quarrel about A.D., but James I would probably also have knighted Roberto Alomar. And who's perfect, anyway? (I have always thought Fame and Morality to be entirely separate universes.)

Annie,

Gee whillikers, I thought I'd seen everything, but no: a blog devoted (almost) exclusively to haiku about the Cubs. One long sequence of seventeen-syllable elegies. Like:

A Chanukah gift?Perhaps it's a miracleMilton Bradley's gone

Those Cubs fans are always looking for somebody to blame it on. For a while it was that fellow Steve Backman with his Awful Espontaneo, ruining the Cubbie Universe.

Back in the day when I was a Wrigley Field usher, there was none of that precious fatalistic self-pity. So okay, the Cubs always lost 106 games. But the environment was always, or anyway usually, lovely. Losing? No bother. The Ernie Banks reply was: "Let's play two."

(And by the by, a small prediction, one of these years the poor much-maligned Milton Bradley is going to come back to haunt somebody's Chanukah.)

Zev,

Your keen poetic awareness of the countdown encourages me to believe there may indeed be something cosmic and eternal in these seasonal cycles.

It has long seemed to me there are two theories of this: 1) The season is like life, it is sweet to us because we are able to believe that it will always return in the Springtime and thus will, for all intents and purposes, last forever; and 2) The season is like life, it is sweet to us because we know it inevitably must end.

"Time rotates..." appears to subscribe to the former theory. But I am conscious also of the possibility that the second theory may be the more accurate one, and that in any case there is A Difference.

Ray,

Well, you've encapsulated this poem into a few words so beautifully -- "intimation", "machination", "pulsing", "impartial", "detached", "trajectory all mapped out" -- no poet could do it better, so I'd better not try explaining about inertial fields and Coriolis effects. (Sometimes even the village explainer must take a break.)

Pops into mind the Fifties film (I believe it was Pillow Talk) in which Doris Day sings (to Rock Hudson, yet) "Que será, será, whatever will be will be..."

Life in the multiverse, that endlessly mysterious infinite/finite game.

Not long ago I wrote a little something from Vermont distance about Philip Whalen passing away and mentioned his bed of "strawberries". Someone closer to the event, and knowing what I didn't know, growled back in an email (unsigned) one word: "Raspberries".

Okay. I like answers.

"Que será, será, whatever will be will be..." = The Man Who Knew Too Much (second version) in case you want to watch it again with A and the kitkats.

...And by the by, while we're (not) on the subject of inertial fields and the Coriolis effect: there remains the crabbed question of whether toilet and bathtub drain-swirls rotate in opposite directions in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres... I suppose the sensible thing would be to enquire of Southern Hemisphere guests... but then how would they know which is the "right" direction (the classic test is to float a small piece of light wood in the drain and see which way it swirls... this is just to give the full empirical experience... it's said the Stuart monarchs secretly employed this test as a qualification for knighthood...)

onceas a kidi hit a ballwith my 'lil roberto'louisville sluggerit was still going upas it rotated and sangout of the yardover the bushesthru the green leavesof the apple orchard treestowards the pale blue pittsburgh sky. we knew that ball was goneinstantly. didnt even look for it. i still have the bat.

Well, it was terrible weather to play in, and Birmingham has been difficult for everybody lately.

Scholes as usual tried to make up for everything by doing, or overdoing, everything. Greater love hath no man.

To paraphrase MacBeth, football hath ruined sleep, all too often, over the years.

No, I live with one human (she has an antiquated land line phone, for emergencies, neither of us has a mobile) and a flock of cats (the cats do not have phones -- though, if we are to believe that blinding genius Julio Cortazar, cats ARE telephones).

Ok what I was going to say is (beffore I read the comments of the cats), I am not sure what this is actually refering to (I can not lie or even pretend I do),but I am thinking it is a game of 'Baseball' or somewhat and then there is this parallel to the universe. Am I close?I am liking that 'making my brain think' and try to connect things and see the comnparisons between such. Which I can , with your words written.BTW Sometimes, just sometimes; you are too funny Thomas.

Apparently dogs have radar that allows them to lock onto the signal of a soft touch. A small spaniel mix literally ran into Chris as he walked home in pouring rain on Boxing Day, and has moved in. No collar, tags or chip, no owner's response to postings. Benevolent Quincy has accepted Mojo as only a former knight of the road can...May Milton find Junior so magnanimous. Yes, it IS all connected. Eventually.

Sitting here in the dark with a stray cat (begged his way in) on my lap, all the other furred and non-furred creatures sleeping, cold, I can feel the planet rotate (not)...

Let me assure everyone that of all games my favourite is the infinite game, life; of all planets my favourite is this one we are spinning around on; and of all the many dots that are undoubtedly spotting up the vision of our extraterrestrial viewers at this moment, I can connect not one to another, if ever I could.

But I believe a telephone must be ringing in the dream of this stray cat on my lap, for he is making small whistling sounds in his sleep.

('Tis consoling to have such excellent friends, furred and non-furred, to share one's nocturnal inanities with.)